Every time the possibility of games consoles running downloaded games comes up, a contingent on Slashdot always insists such a thing will never happen because broadband isn't available to everyone and that even if 90% of potential console users have access to broadband, the console will fail because not everyone has it.
I've always thought that's a complete load a nonsense, but I guess, kinda sorta, we're about to find out how loyal to non-connectivity console users are. If this turns out to be a roaring success, Microsoft might well justify getting rid of cartridges and optical discs and other local media for the next generation.
Bear in mind that while they may be using a new codec - that is, a piece of code designed to convert a video from one format to another - they're not using a new format, if they did, then they could no longer use the hardware acceleration they pretty much rely upon to ensure devices can play their content in real time, and without destroying the battery.
So insofar as they're doing the above, they're not doing it any more than any other codec does, because only compressing changes is what every current codec does well, and pretty much a fundamental assumption behind each mainstream format, from MPEG-1 and H.261 onwards.
Strangely enough, the brand new motherboard I bought for a sixth generation Intel Core CPU last year has PS/2 ports. I'm still trying to work out why - PS/2 has been obsolete now for, what, 15 years? I'm pretty sure RS232 or a floppy drive connector would be more useful.
"Hmm, he spent an hour and 55 minutes on Faceplace, then googled for the solution, and this result is apparently cut and pasted from stackoverflow. Well, I guess he's no worse than anyone else we've hired."
I don't know what Google are saying officially, but in practice Hangouts is deprecated - that is, Google are trying to push people towards alternative products - Allo, Duo, and Messages.
Which is a shame, I rather like it and like the (current) concept of it being a one stop shop for SMS messages, IMs, and transcribed voicemails.
The initial concerns with Hangouts were that it was tied to Google Plus, that Google Plus had that stupid real names policy, and that it was a replacement for Google Chat, which was phased out so nobody could use it any more. Once the Google Plus related issues were fixed, there wasn't really a reason to want to use Google Chat over Hangouts, so it became quite a good system.
The major issue with Hangouts is that Google doesn't want it any more, so we're being pushed to use alternatives, yet again.
OK, initially I read your argument as saying copper (or presumably Fiber) doesn't compete with coax. I'm assuming that's not what you're arguing.
That said, two companies competing is not a monopoly, but a duopoly. In theory some competition exists, even if not much.
I wouldn't argue 3G competes with FTTH because they're not comparable technologies while cable Internet, *DSL, and point-to-point WiMAX/etc are. The latter is, as you say, not popular, and I suspect there's less of it available now than there was a few years ago, largely because it was rolled out by independent ISPs who didn't have the marketing power of Comcast or at&t. But technologically, they deliver similar products, with similar bandwidths, and similar restrictions on their use.
Your comment about 3G raises an interesting question though: with 5G around the corner, and LTE already freeing mobile phone companies to loosen the shackles over mobile Internet usage, I wonder how far away we are from the major wireless companies becoming realistic alternatives to the big two.
TBH I had no idea ICQ was still even running in any form when I wrote the comment. The comment was supposed to be a joke at AOL and Google's expense (Hangouts is barely 5 years old and has been deprecated for more than a year.)
No, but I can imagine a context where someone might say things that aren't sensible. I've said it before, but we're on Slashdot right now. Most of us are software developers or otherwise work in IT at levels where our friends and family have a certain degree of awe about us. Most of us have been called "geniuses" (albeit not necessarily by our peers...)
Yet you see the most ridiculous nonsense posted here on a regular basis. And if the truth be told, while most of us think what we say is true, we're all keenly aware that a good proportion is stuff we don't have enough direct knowledge about to consider ourselves experts.
Wu's comments were made on Twitter, and that's all we know right now. If Wu was responding to a comment saying "As a possible Congresswoman, would you support a bill assisting private ventures to the moon?" and her response was "Fuck no, what about them moon rocks? All they need is a catapult and then BLAMMO! No more Earth! Do you really want Elon Musk to have that kind of power?" then, yeah, uhm, what a dumbass.
On the other hand, if it was a general discussion of colonizing the moon, and her thought was "Oh, I'm sure a war between the Moon and Earth would be devastating. Their lower gravity would make it easier for them to launch missiles at us, hell, they could probably send large rocks with much less power behind them than you'd think", then, well, that's usually a +5 Interesting comment on Slashdot, even if it is fundamentally flawed.
She's deleted the tweet. The Washington Times article is bereft of context. It was a Twitter thought. I... don't have enough to judge. I don't think anyone does. It was a dumb comment, perhaps, but we all make dumb comments. Regardless of context she has to learn that making dumb comments when running an election campaign is not a good idea.
1. You have a multimonitor set-up.
2. You don't intend to replace it for 10 years.
3. You want something powerful enough for whatever it is that's in at the moment. Right now that's VR I guess.
Source: I know people who spent that kind of money on graphics cards over 10 years ago, and are finally considering upgrading.
Me? I have a single 1080p monitor and have no problems upgrading a $100 card every 5 years. So I'm not the target market, but I don't begrudge those who are.
I'd actually love to hear some context for her comments. They're apparently outlandish, but is she really running on a political platform of Moon Rock Skepticism, or did she mention the idea during a general discussion of, say, science fiction (her husband is a science fiction writer, so this isn't as unlikely as it might sound.) If the context isn't ludicrous, I'd hope that she takes a lesson away from this, that when you start a campaign for office you need to understand you no longer have a personal life, and you have even more enemies than when you started.
If the context is as silly as it sounds, Wu needs to step down, recognize her faults, work on them, and consider running when she better understands the political process.
As someone who is more sympathetic to the social issues Wu identifies with, I'm not one way or another about Wu herself - she was pretty intensely targeted by the Gamergate crowd and she stood up for herself, but she's also not always been the most sympathetic and politically constructive person to fight bigotry, and often conformed closely enough to the stereotype of the unhinged SJW to be damaging.
I think Wu knows a lot about many subjects, but like many of us, she thinks she knows a lot about other issues that, perhaps, she's a little lacking in, in much the same way as you might trust Ben Carson to do surgery on you, but not advise you on health insurance reform.
From what I can figure out from TFS, they're giving us the buttons back, albeit in a slightly different form. That's definitely a positive thing.
The buttons were taken away because of the obsession of form over function by smartphone designers - and apparently the market agrees with them. If this is a compromise they can live with, then I'll take it.
Not sure it's necessary, British road signs are generally (with a small number of easily memorable exceptions) pictographic. For example, the sign meaning "Road works ahead" is symbolized by a man opening an umbrella.
Forgive me, but I'm not understanding this. Are you saying that competition does not exist if three companies offer broadband Internet, just because one uses FDDI or copper, one uses coax, and one uses point-to-point wireless?
From a consumer point of view, what would make someone say "I can only have coax, I couldn't possibly use FDDI or P2P WiMAX that are also being offered to me, at similar bandwidths"?
A car driver losing control and injuring a pedestrian would serve more time.
In the US, generally not. I've heard of cases where pedestrians have had some fairly grievous permanent injuries after being hit by a car while they were walking on the sidewalk, and the driver hasn't faced charges. This taxi driver, who hopped onto the sidewalk and severed the leg of a pedestrian, is still driving his cab, as an example.
I'm not sure what I think of that. On the one hand, reckless behavior causes tragedies. On the other, pretty much by definition tragedies caused by reckless, rather than deliberate, behavior are accidents - the fact they're avoidable accidents doesn't mean the perpetrators ever intended them to happen. There needs to be consequences, but destroying someone's career seems to be spreading the misery, not preventing more.
A better focus would be on creating systems that make such accidents more difficult. The same, ultimately, is true of drones.
Streep is an exception (and good for her if she can still pull in that kind of money.) Most actors don't pull in anything like that amount of money, and even those that are able to pull in six digits or, occasionally, seven, digits per movie do so usually knowing they have a shelf life, and that Hollywood will discard them when they get into their 30s. At that point, many know they'll be difficult to hire in any other professions, as they just devoted much of their lives to a single profession, and have no skills outside of that, and have fame as an added handicap.
20 million, incidentally, is dirt cheap for a modern movie (to put it into perspective, the pilot episode of the 2000 TV series Dark Angel cost that much), and the right star can be the difference between a $60-250M movie (which is more the ballpark) either making a loss, or making an outrageous profit. The ticket price, which seems to have held steady at around $10 per adult for the last 20 years now, is what the market has determined is what people will pay, so that's not going to come down if studios were to cut actors salaries. So... why complain about this, specifically? If they're the ones making the movies profitable, and if the money's there, why not let them have a cut?
They're announcing this shortly before the Model 3 goes into production, which will be a mid-budget vehicle.
(Also worth noting: the AutoPilot++ or whatever it's called, the version that's supposedly SAE 5 level that'll be released before the end of the year, isn't free. It's an extra people will have to pay for. If you assume SDC technology will reduce accidents by 66%, and if regular insurance is $1000 a year, then they need to price this at around $3,000 assuming a normal average ten year lifespan of each vehicle. IIRC that was the ball park for the price for the SDC add-on they're going for, so this is quite believable. You're not paying for the technology - that's already paid for, you're buying insurance for the lifetime of the vehicle.
Alphabet are alleging they have specific evidence the former employee downloaded the designs to a laptop, which he then tried to wipe to hide any trace he'd done this. Alphabet are also alleging the same former employee actually bragged about what he was going to do before he did it.
So... assuming they're not lying, this is pretty much open and shut. I guess we'll find out over the next few weeks.
Sometimes the user is at fault. Maybe that means not updating software. Maybe that means after-market software or hardware modifications. Maybe that means extreme neglect of maintenance leading to mechanical failure (which happens now with non-self driving cars), assuming that self-maintaining cars will be way off in the future.
Not only can this be out of the user's control, it should be. The car should be constantly monitoring itself, and the car - being self driven - is capable of driving itself to be serviced, or calling a tow truck if it isn't capable of driving, with core functionality disabled if the car detects a state that means it can't guarantee a safe journey.
There's absolutely no reason not to take this out of the hands of the car "owner". The car doesn't have to be capable of servicing itself, it just needs to be capable of getting qualified people to provide that servicing.
So in other words, you believe Truth in Advertising laws should be overturned? If someone advertises a car as self driving, the consumer should be on the hook for believing them?
If a car is self driving, the manufacturer is making a claim they should stand behind. The consumer shouldn't be blamed for a fault they could not possibly predict or know about.
I'm not following. At worst, you'd expect the additional costs to be equal to, or less than (if the manufacturer believes their cars are less likely to get into an accident, or that the accidents will be lesser in cost, than a human car) to the cost of the liability insurance human-driven car owners pay.
So anyone looking at a self driving car vs a regular car will see a lower TCO, all other things being equal. In reality, right now the SDC will cost slightly more due to the cost of the actual driving equipment, but what we're looking at here is something that brings the cost down, not pushes it up.
Nobody is making the claim that the URLs are non-existent, simply that Google has not indexed them. I'd imagine a lot of copyright infringing file sharing sites have a robots.txt that blocks Google et al to keep them under the radar.
Slashdot Mirror
Every time the possibility of games consoles running downloaded games comes up, a contingent on Slashdot always insists such a thing will never happen because broadband isn't available to everyone and that even if 90% of potential console users have access to broadband, the console will fail because not everyone has it.
I've always thought that's a complete load a nonsense, but I guess, kinda sorta, we're about to find out how loyal to non-connectivity console users are. If this turns out to be a roaring success, Microsoft might well justify getting rid of cartridges and optical discs and other local media for the next generation.
"alexa take down s3 servers a b and c"
"OK, taking down s3"
Bear in mind that while they may be using a new codec - that is, a piece of code designed to convert a video from one format to another - they're not using a new format, if they did, then they could no longer use the hardware acceleration they pretty much rely upon to ensure devices can play their content in real time, and without destroying the battery.
So insofar as they're doing the above, they're not doing it any more than any other codec does, because only compressing changes is what every current codec does well, and pretty much a fundamental assumption behind each mainstream format, from MPEG-1 and H.261 onwards.
Strangely enough, the brand new motherboard I bought for a sixth generation Intel Core CPU last year has PS/2 ports. I'm still trying to work out why - PS/2 has been obsolete now for, what, 15 years? I'm pretty sure RS232 or a floppy drive connector would be more useful.
"Hmm, he spent an hour and 55 minutes on Faceplace, then googled for the solution, and this result is apparently cut and pasted from stackoverflow. Well, I guess he's no worse than anyone else we've hired."
I don't know what Google are saying officially, but in practice Hangouts is deprecated - that is, Google are trying to push people towards alternative products - Allo, Duo, and Messages.
Which is a shame, I rather like it and like the (current) concept of it being a one stop shop for SMS messages, IMs, and transcribed voicemails.
I like Hangouts too.
The initial concerns with Hangouts were that it was tied to Google Plus, that Google Plus had that stupid real names policy, and that it was a replacement for Google Chat, which was phased out so nobody could use it any more. Once the Google Plus related issues were fixed, there wasn't really a reason to want to use Google Chat over Hangouts, so it became quite a good system.
The major issue with Hangouts is that Google doesn't want it any more, so we're being pushed to use alternatives, yet again.
OK, initially I read your argument as saying copper (or presumably Fiber) doesn't compete with coax. I'm assuming that's not what you're arguing.
That said, two companies competing is not a monopoly, but a duopoly. In theory some competition exists, even if not much.
I wouldn't argue 3G competes with FTTH because they're not comparable technologies while cable Internet, *DSL, and point-to-point WiMAX/etc are. The latter is, as you say, not popular, and I suspect there's less of it available now than there was a few years ago, largely because it was rolled out by independent ISPs who didn't have the marketing power of Comcast or at&t. But technologically, they deliver similar products, with similar bandwidths, and similar restrictions on their use.
Your comment about 3G raises an interesting question though: with 5G around the corner, and LTE already freeing mobile phone companies to loosen the shackles over mobile Internet usage, I wonder how far away we are from the major wireless companies becoming realistic alternatives to the big two.
(Whoosh)
TBH I had no idea ICQ was still even running in any form when I wrote the comment. The comment was supposed to be a joke at AOL and Google's expense (Hangouts is barely 5 years old and has been deprecated for more than a year.)
No, but I can imagine a context where someone might say things that aren't sensible. I've said it before, but we're on Slashdot right now. Most of us are software developers or otherwise work in IT at levels where our friends and family have a certain degree of awe about us. Most of us have been called "geniuses" (albeit not necessarily by our peers...)
Yet you see the most ridiculous nonsense posted here on a regular basis. And if the truth be told, while most of us think what we say is true, we're all keenly aware that a good proportion is stuff we don't have enough direct knowledge about to consider ourselves experts.
Wu's comments were made on Twitter, and that's all we know right now. If Wu was responding to a comment saying "As a possible Congresswoman, would you support a bill assisting private ventures to the moon?" and her response was "Fuck no, what about them moon rocks? All they need is a catapult and then BLAMMO! No more Earth! Do you really want Elon Musk to have that kind of power?" then, yeah, uhm, what a dumbass.
On the other hand, if it was a general discussion of colonizing the moon, and her thought was "Oh, I'm sure a war between the Moon and Earth would be devastating. Their lower gravity would make it easier for them to launch missiles at us, hell, they could probably send large rocks with much less power behind them than you'd think", then, well, that's usually a +5 Interesting comment on Slashdot, even if it is fundamentally flawed.
She's deleted the tweet. The Washington Times article is bereft of context. It was a Twitter thought. I... don't have enough to judge. I don't think anyone does. It was a dumb comment, perhaps, but we all make dumb comments. Regardless of context she has to learn that making dumb comments when running an election campaign is not a good idea.
1. You have a multimonitor set-up.
2. You don't intend to replace it for 10 years.
3. You want something powerful enough for whatever it is that's in at the moment. Right now that's VR I guess.
Source: I know people who spent that kind of money on graphics cards over 10 years ago, and are finally considering upgrading.
Me? I have a single 1080p monitor and have no problems upgrading a $100 card every 5 years. So I'm not the target market, but I don't begrudge those who are.
Yes, but this is the last straw, and the majority of those left are taking the opportunity to transition to either ICQ or Google Hangouts.
I'd actually love to hear some context for her comments. They're apparently outlandish, but is she really running on a political platform of Moon Rock Skepticism, or did she mention the idea during a general discussion of, say, science fiction (her husband is a science fiction writer, so this isn't as unlikely as it might sound.) If the context isn't ludicrous, I'd hope that she takes a lesson away from this, that when you start a campaign for office you need to understand you no longer have a personal life, and you have even more enemies than when you started.
If the context is as silly as it sounds, Wu needs to step down, recognize her faults, work on them, and consider running when she better understands the political process.
As someone who is more sympathetic to the social issues Wu identifies with, I'm not one way or another about Wu herself - she was pretty intensely targeted by the Gamergate crowd and she stood up for herself, but she's also not always been the most sympathetic and politically constructive person to fight bigotry, and often conformed closely enough to the stereotype of the unhinged SJW to be damaging.
I think Wu knows a lot about many subjects, but like many of us, she thinks she knows a lot about other issues that, perhaps, she's a little lacking in, in much the same way as you might trust Ben Carson to do surgery on you, but not advise you on health insurance reform.
From what I can figure out from TFS, they're giving us the buttons back, albeit in a slightly different form. That's definitely a positive thing.
The buttons were taken away because of the obsession of form over function by smartphone designers - and apparently the market agrees with them. If this is a compromise they can live with, then I'll take it.
Not sure it's necessary, British road signs are generally (with a small number of easily memorable exceptions) pictographic. For example, the sign meaning "Road works ahead" is symbolized by a man opening an umbrella.
Forgive me, but I'm not understanding this. Are you saying that competition does not exist if three companies offer broadband Internet, just because one uses FDDI or copper, one uses coax, and one uses point-to-point wireless?
From a consumer point of view, what would make someone say "I can only have coax, I couldn't possibly use FDDI or P2P WiMAX that are also being offered to me, at similar bandwidths"?
In the US, generally not. I've heard of cases where pedestrians have had some fairly grievous permanent injuries after being hit by a car while they were walking on the sidewalk, and the driver hasn't faced charges. This taxi driver, who hopped onto the sidewalk and severed the leg of a pedestrian, is still driving his cab, as an example.
I'm not sure what I think of that. On the one hand, reckless behavior causes tragedies. On the other, pretty much by definition tragedies caused by reckless, rather than deliberate, behavior are accidents - the fact they're avoidable accidents doesn't mean the perpetrators ever intended them to happen. There needs to be consequences, but destroying someone's career seems to be spreading the misery, not preventing more.
A better focus would be on creating systems that make such accidents more difficult. The same, ultimately, is true of drones.
Streep is an exception (and good for her if she can still pull in that kind of money.) Most actors don't pull in anything like that amount of money, and even those that are able to pull in six digits or, occasionally, seven, digits per movie do so usually knowing they have a shelf life, and that Hollywood will discard them when they get into their 30s. At that point, many know they'll be difficult to hire in any other professions, as they just devoted much of their lives to a single profession, and have no skills outside of that, and have fame as an added handicap.
20 million, incidentally, is dirt cheap for a modern movie (to put it into perspective, the pilot episode of the 2000 TV series Dark Angel cost that much), and the right star can be the difference between a $60-250M movie (which is more the ballpark) either making a loss, or making an outrageous profit. The ticket price, which seems to have held steady at around $10 per adult for the last 20 years now, is what the market has determined is what people will pay, so that's not going to come down if studios were to cut actors salaries. So... why complain about this, specifically? If they're the ones making the movies profitable, and if the money's there, why not let them have a cut?
They're announcing this shortly before the Model 3 goes into production, which will be a mid-budget vehicle.
(Also worth noting: the AutoPilot++ or whatever it's called, the version that's supposedly SAE 5 level that'll be released before the end of the year, isn't free. It's an extra people will have to pay for. If you assume SDC technology will reduce accidents by 66%, and if regular insurance is $1000 a year, then they need to price this at around $3,000 assuming a normal average ten year lifespan of each vehicle. IIRC that was the ball park for the price for the SDC add-on they're going for, so this is quite believable. You're not paying for the technology - that's already paid for, you're buying insurance for the lifetime of the vehicle.
Alphabet are alleging they have specific evidence the former employee downloaded the designs to a laptop, which he then tried to wipe to hide any trace he'd done this. Alphabet are also alleging the same former employee actually bragged about what he was going to do before he did it.
So... assuming they're not lying, this is pretty much open and shut. I guess we'll find out over the next few weeks.
Not only can this be out of the user's control, it should be. The car should be constantly monitoring itself, and the car - being self driven - is capable of driving itself to be serviced, or calling a tow truck if it isn't capable of driving, with core functionality disabled if the car detects a state that means it can't guarantee a safe journey.
There's absolutely no reason not to take this out of the hands of the car "owner". The car doesn't have to be capable of servicing itself, it just needs to be capable of getting qualified people to provide that servicing.
So in other words, you believe Truth in Advertising laws should be overturned? If someone advertises a car as self driving, the consumer should be on the hook for believing them?
If a car is self driving, the manufacturer is making a claim they should stand behind. The consumer shouldn't be blamed for a fault they could not possibly predict or know about.
I'm not following. At worst, you'd expect the additional costs to be equal to, or less than (if the manufacturer believes their cars are less likely to get into an accident, or that the accidents will be lesser in cost, than a human car) to the cost of the liability insurance human-driven car owners pay.
So anyone looking at a self driving car vs a regular car will see a lower TCO, all other things being equal. In reality, right now the SDC will cost slightly more due to the cost of the actual driving equipment, but what we're looking at here is something that brings the cost down, not pushes it up.
Nothing. But the URLs are not non-existent, just not indexed by Google, probably due to a robots.txt blocking access to the sites concerned.
Nobody is making the claim that the URLs are non-existent, simply that Google has not indexed them. I'd imagine a lot of copyright infringing file sharing sites have a robots.txt that blocks Google et al to keep them under the radar.